


The First Elegy

by selahexanimo



Category: Leviathan - Scott Westerfeld
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-25
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-06 01:05:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1100643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/selahexanimo/pseuds/selahexanimo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Deryn is too sleepy to read German poetry - but Alek insists.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The First Elegy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kariszma83](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kariszma83/gifts).



Alek finds a volume of Rilke’s _Elegies_ in a German bookshop when he and Volger are away on Society business. He carries it home to London with an unnecessary triumph and announces, “Deryn! I am going to teach you to read German.” 

Deryn is already in bed, too tired to bother with anything except nudging off her boots and heaping her clart-spattered slops on the floor (to be dealt with in some far, distant future). Alek nudges her until she cracks open an eye; he shows her the volume and says, “Shall we begin?”

She groans, “But I speak Clanker well enough.”

She leaves the Society’s work of written translations to Alek; it’s worked out so far and she doesn’t understand why he’s trying to fix what ain’t broke. Must be the Clanker in him.

“Indeed.” His voice is patient. “You _do_ speak excellent German. But you do not read it or write it. So I will teach you.”

He lays down beside her, holding the book so Deryn can see the German verses. She doesn’t bother trying to follow along; her eyes hurt, and anyway, she thinks he just wants an excuse to read to her out loud. She prefers to burrow into the warmth of his body, to hook her legs around his and drape an arm across his chest.

Alek says, very low, “You can’t see the poem, _Liebe_.”

She mumbles into his shoulder, “So read it to me.”

He starts reading “The First Elegy.” She drifts off, inevitably, but not before she murmurs, “’S nice. Whatever it’s about.”

“You understood everything?”

She shrugs. “Most of it. Well as anyone gets poetry the first time round." She shrugs. "I liked that one line. With the birds. The air. Flying.”

“ _Vielleicht daß die Vögel/die erweiterte Luft fühlen mit innigerm Flug_ ,” he says, very slow.

“Aye. That’s the one.”

Alek’s quiet laugh shakes the bed. “Of course you would understand that line.”

“Mmm.” She presses her mouth against his neck and smiles. He shivers. She starts to kiss him, the underside of his jaw, working her lazy way around to his mouth, but he is reading again, _Ja, die Frühlinge brauchten dich wohl_. She lets him. His voice is made for poetry. She is thinking this, and smiling, when she falls asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> A translation of the lines quoted in the piece (from [here](http://allspirit.co.uk/rilkefirst.html)):
> 
> \- _Vielleicht daß die Vögel/die erweiterte Luft fühlen mit innigerm Flug_ : perhaps the birds will feel the expanded air with more passionate flying.
> 
> \- _Ja, die Frühlinge brauchten dich wohl_ : Yes - the springtimes needed you.


End file.
